To Carry a Torch in the Dark
by Moriarty-Florence Moriarty
Summary: 1927. The world is still on the mend after the Great War, but Molly is finding it hard to cope in a high society that loathes her, but is infatuated with her fiancée; Sherlock Holmes. Molly loves him with all her heart, but when Irene Adler hits the scene and captures Sherlock's attention, will Molly leave him to spare her aching heart? Sherlolly, Period Drama! Two Shot.
1. Chapter 1

"To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves."

- **Federico Garcia Lorca**

**xxx**

_1927_

Everything was so beautiful. Colours shone off of refined glass and jewels, laughter floated in the air amongst smoke and light danced from every eye and each smile. Molly felt so pretty as she descended the steps into the ball room of Lord Victor Trevor, whose family was rather new money compared to the judging upper class in the room. All of the young woman's usual shyness melted from her as she gazed into the lively room, as though she was in a Fairy-tale.

Usually Molly avoided parties like the plague, a sentiment that her fiancée shared, but her up and coming marriage and the fact that the host was a personal friend meant that her presence was expected.

Sherlock Holmes, the most wonderful man that Molly had ever met, the second son of a family with relation to the king, a Great War hero and surprisingly _her_ fiancée. Mousy Molly Hooper had found an astounding man to spend the rest of her life with, despite her lower place on the society ladder. Not that Molly cared what the upper class thought of her, she only wanted Sherlock's families' approval, not anyone else's.

Tonight Sherlock had donned his old army uniform, as many of the former soldiers had, pressed and adorned with all the medals he had won on the front. He hated them, called them useless metal coins, but Molly had insisted and he reluctantly agreed. A small victory in her war against the world's biggest three year old with a full grown temper and no verbal filter.

_He probably feels bad for snapping at me yesterday ... though it would be more likely he's getting on my good side as to get something from me later. I swear now I am not marching five miles just to track the course of his blasted bees. Not again._

After Sherlock returned form the trenches he had been a different person, he barely left his estate, wore his hair in long unruly curls and spent most of his free time with the charming Doctor Watson, who had been a medic on the front and had treated Sherlock for a nasty gun wound. Molly silently thanked that man every day for saving Sherlock's life. The younger Holmes brother had always been to some degree cold, but when he came back he was often cruel, especially to Molly. At the time they had not been engaged but they had lived under the same roof (_something Mrs Holmes insisted on, no matter how scandalous it was, saying Sherlock needed a familiar face), _under the premise of Molly caring for him with her war learned nursing skills.

Molly could still clearly remember the day that everything changed. She had walked into the library one morning only to find Sherlock having tea with a Grecian god-like man; Lord Victor Trevor. He was summer and sunshine in contrast to Sherlock's winter and night. Victor stayed with them most of the day, regaling a rather surly Sherlock with his traveling adventures since the end of the war. He may have been a thought after lord but he was also a shameless flirt. When Molly walked him to the door he implored her to go horse riding with him next weekend, only adding Sherlock to the invitation after Molly mentioned him.

After Victor departed Molly could practically feel the storm clouds. Sherlock basically exploded, rounding on her on the stair case, throwing accusations and cruel remarks. Molly had been so shocked when she started to scream back in a way that would make Sherlock's family scowl; proper manners were to be often disregarded when it came to the dysfunctional Sherlock Holmes. Emotions had been running high, but when Sherlock stepped towards her with fire in his eyes, Molly had flinched violently and slipped to her knees on the stairs. Silence filled every room and every breath like a crushing blanket.

Sherlock had looked at her like he never had before, like he was in physical pain and shock at the same time.

"_You … you are afraid of me…"_

After that signal utterance he locked himself in his room for a whole five days. On the sixth day he found her in the garden amongst the daisies and snap dragons. There was no grand speech or apology, no brass band or romantic scene when he fell to his knees beside and a presented her with his Great-great-great-grandmothers diamond and emerald ring. She had been covered in dirt form planting a batch of Poppies and he was clad in his ratty dressing gown. Molly wouldn't have had it any other way. That had been three months ago.

Nothing had drastically changed after that. They still lived together; still spent days in a familiar silence, still had tea at noon and supper in the library. They were still Molly Hooper; the new money mouse, and Sherlock Holmes; the brilliant and infuriating. The only changes were; Molly had to get used to wearing a ring, Sherlock's mother called around more and invitations to parties and balls came in a steady stream. People seemed to think an engagement meant Sherlock had '_gotten over'_ his Shell Shock.

Molly was bought out of her reprieve by Sherlock pushing on the small of her back as they reached the bottom of the stair case.

"You are day dreaming rather loudly," he whispered not unkindly "That group of old women over there are beginning to think I have drugged you and the French dignitaries are using your unaware state to stare at your breasts." He almost sounded amused.

Kindness was another change. Sherlock's cruel words had died down in relation to her as well, replaced with a certain kindness or , if she dare fondness.

Molly smiled up at his bright blue ice eyes.

"Jealous, Sherlock?" she dared to flirt. She blushed and looked down once again.

"Immensely so."

"Then maybe you should have dressed me in a Nuns habit, rather than this stunning dress."

"Are you flirting?"

"Trying. Failing to."

"Why flirt when you already have the objective?" he asked with honest to god confusion.

_Women like me don't get the prince Sherlock. Not completely. Never permanently. _

Molly sighed once more and looked down at her dress, smiling at it fondly. It was as though Sherlock had looked into her dreams and pulled out the dress from her mind. In truth he had ordered it from London.

A lace adorned collar sat just low enough to show a smidgeon of cleavage, and its floaty shoulders were adorned with fleches of beads that also shimmered on the floor length skirt. Everything was an elegant purple, more red-ish than blue-ish, and her hands were adorned with black kid gloves lined in lace as well. Her shoes were simple and her hair was up in simple loose curls, held together by a beaded ribbon. Sherlock had insisted on doing her face, he was odd like that.

Molly thought she looked rather fetching, at least in comparison to her every day wear, and the gentlemen of the room seemed to think so as well. All of those thoughts flew form Molly's mind the second that the most beautiful woman she had ever seen appeared at the top of the stair case and held the eyes of everyone in the room. Including Sherlock.

Molly was somewhat relived by the fact that people were no longer letting their eyes linger on her, attention was not something she craved. No what crushed her happy thought was the way Sherlock was looking at the new coming lady. His colour changing eyes that usually remained cold looked alight as he gazed at The Woman, a look that Molly only ever got when she shouted at him, and only when she tried. It made her heart sink and all colour leave her face as Molly realized it wasn't anger in his eyes (_as it was with her_). It was the look of a hunter when he spied a wolf spying him. It was intrigue.

Though it was easy to see why every hot blooded male and some females would be attracted to The Woman.

Irene Adler. An American by birth, who still carried her thick New Jersey accent wherever she went, had three husbands before she reached twenty seven and inherited enough money to buy out the crown from all of their demises. After her third husband she gave up the thought of marriage and instead piped money form lovers and business deals, though no one seemed to know what her business was. Or so Mrs Hudson liked to gossip over tea in the parlour.

She had bought the East coast of America with her tonight. The young social girls in the states had taken to cutting their hair short, colouring their locks black, smoking in public and dancing around in short skirted dresses. Flappers the papers called them, and it would seem Irene Adler was the perfect image of one. Her eyes were rimmed in black and blue, in sheer contrast to her blood red lips and short very black hair. She wore a emerald green fingered and beaded dress that showed off her stocking clad knees and matching heels. All accompanied by a sly look and a cigarette balanced between her gloved fingers.

Molly found herself blushing at the mere thought of herself dressing in such a way. _I defiantly don't have the legs to pull it off._

"Molly?" Sherlock mumbled without taking his eyes from the American woman.

"Yes, Sherlock?"

He gave no reply, not verbally. He pressed a strong hand firmly against her back and looked deeply into her eyes, his expression unreadable. He looked almost … something; Molly was at a loss for the right word to describe him. She was often at a loss for words around Sherlock.

As soon at the moment came it was gone and Sherlock was once again staring at The Woman. As though she had felt Sherlock's eyes and Molly's panicked thoughts Irene turned her mirthful eyes on the couple. With a twinkly laugh at Lord Victor she sauntered their way, with rolling hips and a burly man nipping at her heels with a stern expression.

Molly felt was though she was behind a sheet of glass watching time move in pictures. She saw Irene Adler stand in front of them and remark; "_Well aren't you the cat's meow_." She felt the room swell with noise once more as people went back to the conversations, and felt Sherlock's reassuring hands leave her touch. She saw Irene wind herself around Sherlock's arm and pull him away from Molly, with a look on her face that distinctly said the invitation was not extended to Molly. She could have sworn she saw the woman's body guard smirk at her as he passed, his teeth as yellow as cheese and eyes twisted in sick pleasure.

Everything came crashing back suddenly and Molly felt herself gasp. She was standing alone, stock still as another woman dragged her Fiancée away to a table were all the smoke in the room was emanating from. She felt embarrassment as the whispers started and anger … but she could not bring herself to follow them.

Molly knew that Sherlock did not love her like she did him, but she never expected …

Molly was pulled from her thoughts by a gentle hand on her forearm. She turned to see a man, a man dress in a slightly odd Tuxedo and longer, rather messy looking brown hair. His face held a certain charm, but his eyes looked older than he was. He also seemed to have some kind of metal cylinder topped with a kind of blue glass sticking out from under his jacket.

"I think you could use a drink." He said in a British accent laced with something else Molly could not place.

Against her better judgement Molly followed the man, only stopping to look back at her fiancée. He didn't notice, Ms Adler seemed to be occupying all of his attention.

The man led Molly to a collection of soft high-back chairs that had been assembled near one of the six very large windows. Without a word he seemed to pull a glass of Champaign out of thin air and seat Molly away from peering eyes at the same time.

"I…" Molly winced as her voice broke, "I am slightly confused as to what just happened."

The man sat down in the chair across from her, sitting in a slouched way that would make blue bloods blush. Luckily Molly's blood was red. She frowned when she saw that the man's shoes were made of some kind of red fabric and had a star symbol sewn onto the sides.

"I'm sorry, I did not catch you name sir."

The man leant forwards and shook her hand with a contagious grin that reminded Molly of her father.

"John! John Smith," he elated, "It's a pleasure to make you acquaintance Molly Hooper!"

Molly tilted her head as she dropped his hand.

"But, Mr Smith, I did not tell you my name."

"Oh…I know all about you Ms Hooper. And call me Doctor, everyone dose."

Molly smiled. _Another Doctor John, the world is laughing at me this day._

"Thank you for um…"

"Saving you?"

"One could say that."

"One could also say that your fiancée should be sitting where I am right now."

Molly winced and took a sip of her drink.

She had been kidding herself to think that the relationship she had with Sherlock would last. Sherlock came from one of the oldest families in Britain, born into class and high standards. Molly was the daughter of a business man who won it big and moved his family into an old country manor so he could do business with the neighbouring lords and ladies.

She had known Sherlock since she was fourteen and he was sixteen, they used to walk home from their adjacent Schools together and play in his family's orchid. She had known him long enough to know that a man like him did not end up with someone as low class as herself. Who had she been fooling saying yes to a proposal that was only proposed so she wouldn't leave him? Sherlock hated change more than he like Molly.

_Maybe I'm over reacting. She is just a woman who wished to speak with Sherlock alone, probably about business… and insanely attractive woman. A woman Sherlock did not seem to mind. And Sherlock had no business. Maybe he-_

"Stop it." John Smith said sternly to her, all smiles gone from his face. He looked so old in that moment.

_As old as time._

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're thinking loudly," he said, so like Sherlock but kinder, "You're thinking about how pretty that woman is in contrast to you. How pretty Sherlock is, and how pretty they are together. I bet right now you are thinking about how she would be a much better match for Sherlock."

Molly didn't bother to ask how he knew so much. He obviously shared some gifts Sherlock had.

"Don't you see it as well?" Molly implored, "With a single entrance she had the whole room wrapped around her finger, every man wanting to be with her. Sherlock has that exact same effect on women. Tell me you do not see the way they complement each other, at least looks wise. She is everything the upper-class expects him to marry. They expect me to work in the kitchen and wear a black and white uniform."

The man shook his head.

"Sherlock Holmes is not one to fall for exteriors if I remember rightly. I think you are over reacting."

She sighed.

"You could be right," She said with a withered smile, "I'm always doing that. Sherlock always tells me to shut up when I do."

The Doctor chuckled.

"You should smile more often Ms Hooper."

"I have never had a talent for being happy."

"Well when you acquire one, will you clue me in?"

Molly giggled.

People were dancing graceful in the middle of the room, joyously celebrating in a way that had only arisen after the war was done. Sherlock hated dancing, but he was always so graceful in contrast to Molly. She loved dancing and yet she looked like a goose when she did. She loved Sherlock and he made her feel like a goose on a daily basis.

Molly found herself chattering away with the man across form her, about books and medicine, the strange doctor told fables and impossible stories of far off places that Molly knew did not exist. He was so strange, kind of like how Sherlock was strange but more chaotic and nonsense.

Molly let out a laugh as he regaled her with unfortunate school time event.

"…needless to say I will never go near custard again!"

At that moment a woman with soft red hair and a kindly face walked over to the duo, slapping the Doctor on the arm and calling him 'Space man'. The way she spoke reminded Molly of Mrs Hudson, but her eyes held a fire that the Housekeeper didn't. She was clad in a classy midnight blue gown and her hair glittered with a string of pearls and glittering beads. Molly thought she looked charming.

"Donna Noble, may I present Ms Molly Hooper- soon to be Lady Molly Holmes." at that introduction the woman's smiling face changed to one of shock, and dare Molly think, excitement?

"You mean the Molly Holmes?"

"The one and only," Doctor Smith replied.

"The woman who-"

"Yep."

"During the-"

"Also yep."

"Against the-"

"Yep!" the popped the 'P' at the end, making Molly giggle at the strange side conversation.

The woman took the chair beside Molly and reached to shake her hand.

"It's an honour to meet you Miss."

Molly smiled, "I feel the same, Ms Noble."

The Doctor across from them smiles as he pulled a small silver box from his pocket, Molly looked on astonished as she saw it was covered in dials and flashing coloured bulbs.

"Donna and I really must be going Ms Hooper," He said looking up from his box to gaze at her with, " We are on the hunt for an energy being … _Well_ several hundred energy beings – but there's this one big one that keeps stirring up trouble."

"You speak such wonderful nonsense," Molly giggled, the champagne going to her head.

"He gets that a lot," Donna giggled along.

The Doctor pulled Donna from her seat and whispered something in her ear that caused her to saunter off with one final wave and a smile for Molly. Dr Smith crouched down in front of Molly, startling the smile off her face. He was looking at her with such a serious face it made the rest of the room disappear, and Molly hold her breath waiting for his words. Never had she met a man who could go from chatty to powerful in mere moments.

"Molly Hooper," He said lowly, taking her hand in his as he spoke, "One day, one day _soon _the world is going to be turned upside down once more. Darkness and death and everything that the world had just survive so recently…" he seemed to struggle for words as Molly lost all her colour.

"… When this happens your life is going to change, and I know it seems impossible for a young woman like yourself to understand this now but the world is going to need people like you. The day is going to come when Sherlock will need you. He is going to need you by his side…"

"Doctor –"

"….And I'm Sorry – I am so _so_ sorry,… but you're going to have to save them all."

And with that blood chilling statement the Doctor stood and kissed her forehead, muttering things she could not catch. The next moment The Doctor was running across the room after Donna, his funny shoes squeaking and his funny box thrust in front of him as he went.

As Molly watched the funny man leave she felt a coldness settle in her bones, the words he had just uttered bouncing around in her head. Especially the words of darkness and death, and Sherlock needing her by his side.

_Need is different to Love my funny doctor. And I do not crave need._

An hour of solitude and attempted mingling later the party died down and Sherlock found her sitting outside in the garden. Without a word he took her arm and led her out to their Automobile, and without a word he helped her in to her seat. Molly could not bring herself to talk to Sherlock, his mod was dangerous and she felt tears in her eyes at the mere thought of his cruel snaps. The road in silence, and when they were in sight of home Molly realized something that made her stomach turn.

He smelled like _her_.

She waited till the driver was out of sight to rush into the house, intent to lock herself in her room and cry all of her heartache out. But when her foot touched the bottom step she was wrenched back by Sherlock's hand on her arm.

"Molly," he all but growled, looming over her a hairs breath away, "Tonight-"

"Sherlock I don't want to talk about he-"

"-Who was that man? The one you spent almost all night _chatting_ with?" he sneered out the word as though it was scandalous and wrong to talk to other people.

"Him? He was a Doctor," Molly explained ripper her arm from his hand; "he took pity on me and rescued me from the situation you left me in. He was kind."

Sherlock scowled down at her and loomed ever closer, if it were possible.

"I left you-"

"For a seductress and a table full of rich men to do god knows what, and honestly Sherlock I'm done giving a damn."

Sherlock looked shocked. He swallowed several times, speechless for once in his life. With a strong elegant hand he cupped her cheek and Molly cursed her heart for swelling.

"Why are you crying?"

Molly started and stepped back from his body and hand, using her own to wipe her face. She was internally cursing her body for betraying her and in front of Sherlock no less.

"I am exhausted- we all do stupid things when we are tired. But, then again everything I do is stupid to you."

"I have never said you are stupid!"

"You don't have to say it I know you're thinking it, Sherlock. Just because we live under the same roof does not mean you have any special feelings for me, and it certainly does not make me any less stupid than you and your family think I am!"

Molly knew she was rambling, shouting and saying things she had been thinking for years but never said for fear of a reprimand from Sherlock. But now, after an evening of mental turmoil and anguish she had lost the will to care. About anything really.

Sherlock stood in front of her looking shocked and wounded, like a kicked puppy. Molly doubted it was real emotion; Sherlock was the best actor she had ever seen. Combine that with the fact that he didn't give a damn about anything she said or thought. She lost count of all the times she was told to shut up because her '_mindless chatter'_ was dumbing down the room, or that her jokes made him physically ill.

Without another word Molly spun on her heels and marched up the stairs. Sherlock called her name, waiting for her to crumble and run back to him like she always did when she was angry. She didn't run back or look back, she just held in her tears until she was locked in her room where she could cry in silence.

**xxx**

**Hope you like this! The first part in a two shot of Historical Sherlolly. I might do a few of these. Couldn't resist putting the Doctor and Donna in there, (though I'm not so sure about the conversation I wrote for them, it seems week but it's the best I could do.)**

**Hope people like this, it was fun to write and don't kill me for the cliff hanger.**_** Review, I command thee!**_**  
**


	2. Chapter 2

"There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from."

-**Elisabeth Kubler-Ross**

**xxx**

_1927_

For three weeks silence ruled the lives of Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper. For three weeks they lived in the same house and ate the same meals. For three weeks Molly lived in a constant state of Hell.

She avoided Sherlock at all costs, taking lunch in her room or in the part of the garden with the flowers that made his eyes itch so he would not eat with her. She ignored him in the halls and spent more time out of the house than ever before. She even stopped having tea with him in the library.

Some people would call Molly's actions cruel, that she was hurting him. Sherlock Holmes was a man of many things; he investigated odds and ends for his high society and influential brother, he kept bees in the apple orchid they used to run through as _scandalous _teenagers with John Hamish Watson. But, Sherlock Holmes was a man without time for useless things, and as of three weeks ago Molly was a useless thing.

There had been a time when Sherlock had needed her, when he was fresh from the Flinders trenches and needed her to dress his wounds … to hold him down when he screamed… to pull the knife away from his wrist and throw the white powder in the Wickersham's lake. Molly had helped Sherlock to remember who he was, to be a brilliant man again. She was now a nurse with a well patient.

Obsolete and unwelcome, just as her mind had always whispered to her when thinking of Sherlock.

She did not doubt that Sherlock on some level had an inclination towards fondness for her, a slight feeling that when coupled with his families pressure for a wife resulted in a proposal. Molly was probably just the least detestable woman to ask … the last choice. As always.

Molly also knew that Sherlock was capable of emotions, he loved his mother in an odd withdrawn and loyal way and John Watson had a way of changing Sherlock into a more human, human being. Sherlock was only ever Sherlock around Molly, an intimidating mind inside an angel who refused to share his toys.

No, Sherlock most certainly didn't hold Love for the young woman who wore his family's antique ring. He was a passionate man, a man of action and violent emotion, and Molly knew that under the right circumstances all that fire could be turned into the kind of love that poets sweated over. Molly was a business man's daughter with a plain face who wore last year's fashions and was laughed at by everyone. She had no chance of making Sherlock realize love.

But she would stand even less chance in a loveless marriage to a man like Sherlock. A man that would one day find his equal, man or woman and completely detest her for staying. In time he would forget all about the short mousy girl with too big knees and a too small mouth.

All of these ideas flew around Molly's mind as she marched through the terrace gardens surrounding the Holmes Manor. The sun would be setting soon and an odd yellowish light cast everything in a fairy-tale light and illuminated the dust-fairies in the air. Molly was bare foot and wearing her favourite plum coloured lounging dress that flapped about her calves and had lace adorning the cuffs and collar. Her face was void of all make-up and she let her long chestnut hair hand lose around her like a kind of safety blanket.

She would be bare before his eyes and Molly took comfort in the knowledge in the thought that the last time Sherlock Holmes ever saw her he would really be _seeing_ her.

He was seated at an old white chipped chair and table set from the times of Victoria and her court, dressed charmingly in slacks, a lose white button down and a black waist coat that had threaded copper coloured curls wound through it. Her favourite waist coat, the one she saved for months to have made for him, from a boutique in London. Molly chose to ignore that cigarette hanging from his fingers on the table and bareness of his feet; it ruined the picture of him as a dashing prince charming in her mind's eye.

_Prince's marry Princesses not Kitchen girls, Molly._

Molly pulled at her nails as she walked towards Sherlock, her eyes flitting to and from the form of his back, which was too her. She repeated her reasons for her decision over and over again in her mind as she stepped ever closer, also mentally scorning herself for coming straight from her rooms before packing her things.

_This is the right thing to do. One day he is going to find someone as brilliant as he is to be with, someone ten times smarter than me and drop dead beautiful to spend his evenings in the Library with. Someone who will be just as full of heavenly fire, and be able to teach Sherlock how to love. Someone that I can never be in a million years._

With a determined sigh Molly came to stand next to the man of her dreams, dreams probably being another one of those things Sherlock had no need for.

The gardens looked like Alice's Wonderland, the woodland around them rustling with the promise of Magic with Sherlock presiding over the whole area like a Summer and Fire king. The moment was perfect and Molly let herself memorised everything she could about it, before she lay her hand on the kings shoulder to rouse him from his mind built palace.

**xxx**

The Holmes family was famous for many things. Their power, their influence, their hereditary features that could be construed as handsome or beautiful, and that Holmes intellect that just seemed to piss everyone off a lot. But the Holmes family was also famous for the dark and unshakeable moods that would take the mother and her youngest son suddenly and not relent for days on end.

Right now Sherlock was in one of those moods. And he hated himself for it.

Molly Hooper was acting strangely, and not just in the usual way she did … the way that he found endearing despite how it annoyed him. No, Molly Hooper was acting distant and so unlike herself it had Sherlock _… feeling_ things he wasn't used to feeling.

When she avoided his eyes in the hall his stomach seemed to turn. When he saw her walking in the Gardens for hours his hands would clench till his palms bled. And every evening when he waited for hours in the library for her to sit and have tea with him… his eyes _stung_.

Every night since she had changed Sherlock walked passed her rooms, and for the last few nights he had given into weakness, spending the night-time hours at her bedside and counting every breath she took. With every day that passed with Molly avoiding him he found himself seeking her company without her knowing and craving her attention with his every breath. He loathed it.

When the war was over and some god forsaken treaty had be force upon the Germans, the English soldiers had been sent home to lick their wounds and resemble those brave men who sailed from England months before. Sherlock did not return from the war well, not like John who had found a wife and happiness from getting shot in the leg before he could be sent over the top of the trenches.

No Sherlock had been sent home broken to an empty house that some relative had been given in a marriage deal or some twaddle. For weeks he had wallowed in his own pain, turning to the powders and plants that Victor helped some smugglers smuggle into England. They had provided temporary release from the pain but not from the crushing loneliness that had invaded his mind. He had never been lonely before.

And then she had appeared, materializing beside him as he sat amongst the marigolds and sunflowers. She had looked just as she had when he left her at the train station, smiling and innocent and pretty in a way that he wanted no one else to see. If he closed his eyes he could still feel how her lips felt when he kissed her goodbye at the station and pick pocketed her photo to keep with him, in a male mammal moment that he wasn't aas ashamed of as he said he was to John.

Molly had been told by John and Lady Holmes herself of how Sherlock was struggling and responded to nothing they offered to help him. Molly had been sent to rebuild him. And she did.

In weeks, such long weeks of hell full of screaming and blood, he had kicked the habit and in weeks after that his wounds ceased to throb with his every thought or step with her through the gardens. His bad moods after that became few and far between and Molly kept him in line when he verbalized said moods.

John called Molly his saving Angel. Sherlock disagreed, angels were avenging soldiers. Molly took away his pain and yelled at him when he was cruel. Molly was fire and silence and peace and so many things that made no sense at all. Molly made no sense! Molly stayed with him ….

But now something had changed some factor of their life style that had disenchanted her. And for the life of him Sherlock could not figure out what. All he knew was that Molly was acting just as his Mother used to, before his father ran off to Spain with a illegitimate Royal and not a penny to his name.

The thought of Molly leaving him made his body revolt with a wave of unpleasant feelings and tenseness in his limbs.

He hadn't been subject to this feeling often but he had felt it before. When Molly had gotten all flustered when the postman had called her small quip about the weather charming. When his cousin had gotten a little too drunk at a Christmas party and tried to peer down her blouse. When Victor had tried to get under Molly's skirts with a few charming smiles and an invitation to go horse riding. That last event had made his blood boil and anger flood his mind.

Molly made him feel so many unwanted things, and yet the absence of Molly or the threat of absence made him feel things that crippled him. He was stuck in a stalemate. Life with Molly was full of so much that he didn't know how to deal with (see; marriage, playing happy families, parties, commitment, feelings) and yet if he chose a life that didn't have Molly it would hold only the promise of something he had tried so hard to overcome.

So after all these events Sherlock had decided to never give Molly the option of leaving. But despite all of the planning and emotional development he had suffered through, Molly was distancing herself from him, and he had no idea how to keep her from leaving this time. The last time it had taken an engagement.

So knowing not what to do the great Sherlock Holmes retreated to the gardens sitting in the spot where he and Molly used to have picnics in their youth.

She had been so different then. Her father was a man who stumbled upon money, money he worked hard to earn and keep. All of the rich aristocrats that were friends to the Holmes family detested the Hooper's and their 'new money', but Lady Holmes herself found a friend in Robert Hooper and his kin. And no one dared to upset the fearsome Lady Violet Holmes.

Sherlock had met Molly for the first time in the Gardens surrounding his family's estate. She had been an awkward girl of fourteen while he was sixteen and growing handsomely into the man he would become, or so his mother said. She had been admiring the flowers when she stumbled upon the youngest Holmes whilst he was studying the flight patterns of the bees. In no time Molly was wrapped around Sherlock finger, following him round like a lost puppy that wasn't afraid of mud or hunting for frogs in the rain, two qualities Sherlock had always respected her for.

Though he would never admit to it Sherlock often found himself wandering around the section of his Mind Palace that contained those youthful memories, wallowing in the memories of how everything was before the war changed them all.

But what had changed recently? Sherlock took a long drag from his cigarette as he thought on this. Everything had been fine until the evening at Victors, before that night Molly had been content and happy and not at all like she was presently.

_Could she still be upset that I left her alone? Unlikely, Molly is logical to a degree that outlaws such petty feelings over such an extended period of time. Something I said? Unlikely Molly wouldn't let me speak on our return h-_

'… _honestly Sherlock I'm done giving a damn'_

'…_I am exhausted- we all do stupid things when we are tired. But, then again everything I do is stupid to you.'_

'_... Just because we live under the same roof does not mean you have any special feelings for me, and it certainly does not make me any less stupid than you and your family think I am!'_

'…_Why are you crying?'_

Sherlock pulled smoke from the white cylinder resting on his fingers, blowing it out as his thoughts zoomed around inside his skull.

"I made Molly cry…" he remembered out loud, "And I have no idea how I did it…"

Sherlock jolted physically as his mind was pulled from its musings and into memories.

Molly, twirling around in the foyer her feet bare and hair down as she watched her new dress shimmer around her and her laughter echoing off the walls like music.

Molly smiling up at him as they descended the stairs, her face flushed and her eyes twinkling as she gazed up at him. Gazed, she always gazed never stared.

Molly sitting in the garden of the Trevor estate, curled up on a secluded seat and staring at the night sky like it was the most heartbreaking thing in the world.

Molly, Molly, always _Molly._

She filled is head and drew his breath, encompassed him and imprisoned him as though he were that snooty lord in that trashy literature she loved so much. He was trapped by her and … and truth be told, he didn't mind.

Sherlock had … feelings for the young woman who had infiltrated his life and mind, feelings that made him loath himself and gave him the biggest high. He wanted no other man to neither touch her nor look at her; he wanted to keep her all to himself all the time. He wanted Molly, wanted her in ways that he had convinced himself were unnecessary mammal instincts and nothing more. He wanted her still and always, but now … now he was losing the one person he had met since the fallout that made him feel something other than anger, the only person besides John Watson who encouraged his deductive crime solving, the only woman who seemed to like him for more than just his face.

As the wind blew through the grass and flowers, and the sun sunk lower in the sky, Sherlock continued to muse over the woman who was vexing him. He was so caught up in a plan of attack to make her stay that he did not hear the small squelching foot prints from behind him. He did not notice Molly at his side until she placed her small elegant hand on his arm and took the cigarette from his fingers.

Her touch sent a shock through his nerves and stirred his male mammal instincts to do so many un-gentlemanly things to her. But the look on her face told him something … something he couldn't quite grip.

She looked heart broken.

xxx

"Sherlock…" Molly breathed, stepping back from him slightly now that she had his attention. She tried not to notice how the sun illuminated his ever changing eyes, or the way her stomach flipped over itself as though she had swallowed butterflies. She needed to do this quickly and cleanly … before she broke down and wept in front of him.

Sherlock shifted in his chair, shifted closer to her and Molly had to close her eyes tightly to hold back her traitorous thoughts of him.

"Molly? I-"

"Sherlock I've come to say goodbye!" Molly announced quickly, her eyes still clenched shut, "I-I have come upon some revelatory … realizations recently and I have decided that it would be best for everyone if I were to leave…"

Sherlock looked as though he had been frozen when Molly opened her eyes, his entire body was tensed up and his eyes were wide open as they stared at the empty space next to her hip.

" … I no longer feel that we should go on living the way we have. I do not want you to look back on your life in years to come and loath me for staying with you here, Sherlock. The way we have been living … It is time … I'm holding you back from everything you should be and everything that you deserve."

Sherlock breathed in slowly as though every movement pained him. Molly told herself it was just his reaction to the awkward social situation she was placing him in. Sherlock always did loath her mindless chatter.

"Everything I deserve..?"

" I-I realize at Victors party exactly how my presence in your life has been … containing you," she continued with a stutter as her hair and dress fluttered softly about her, " I think I realized the moment I saw Miss Adler descending the staircase. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen … and I could tell that you noticed this also. I don't think I've ever seen you gaze at anyone quite like you gazed at her…"

Molly twisted her hand together and forced herself not to look at her feet, to show that level of weakness in front of him.

"… She was everything that society expects you to Marry, Sherlock. Beautiful, captivating, social and I presume intellectual, she would have to be a genius to hold your attention for an entire evening… I can never be like her. I can never be a woman who is at your level, and if I remain by your side I know that I time you would resent me for not leaving now and giving you the chance to marry a woman of your equal. And … I don't think my heart could bear to take that…"

Molly sighed and turned her back on Sherlock as tears began to silently fall down her cheeks. He hands were red from clutching each other and her heart was beating so loudly it sounded like a drum beat in her ears.

_This is for the best_, _Molly Hooper. One day he will thank you for doing this._

_Then why does it hurt it bad?_

"I will be out by the end of the day," She said softly without looking at him, her gaze fixed on the manor before her, "You don't have to see me off … please listen to Mrs Hudson when I'm gone," Molly held back a sob as her last words tore their way out of her throat, " I …I love you Sherlock Holmes … and I hope your life finds every happiness … without me.."

Pain flooded her chest forcing its way to every part of her body and freezing her from the inside out. With shaking feet Molly stepped quickly away from the man she had loved since she was fifteen years old. She could do nothing to stop the tears now, and Molly just prayed that she was gone before he returned inside; she did not want to see the finality in his eyes.

Molly must have been no more than ten steps away when her body was wrenched around by her elbow and she was bought face to face with the fury that is Sherlock Holmes.

"Is that truly what you believe?" he seethed with an uneasy steadiness.

"Sherl-"

" _Is that what you truly believe_!" he roared, his fingers grasping the tender flesh of her arms so tight she could feel the indentations filling with blood and turning blue.

Before she could gasp a reply he was seething again, his eyes burning with a hell fire that sacred and … thrilled her at the same time. _Oh Molly you are odd._

"Do you truly believe that you are not better than the likes of Irene Adler? That you are not good enough to be my equal?" with a tormented laugh Sherlock stepped back from her, spinning on his heels and running his hands through his incontrollable hair before he spun back to face her, "You truly think that I would be better off with a woman like her? That my existence would be a happier one with her in it?"

"She is-"

" What she is, Molly Hooper, is the most disgusting woman that I have ever had the misfortune of meeting."

Molly's stomach twisted as his eyes glared her down.

"You lie," Molly whimpered, "If she is so disgusting than why did you spend an entire evening with her?"

Sherlock growled. Actually growled, as though he was a wolf instead of a member of the aristocracy.

" I was on a case!" he exclaimed, " she was extorting Victor and he came to me for help. She spent the entire evening trying to seduce me whilst I gathered enough information to condemn her and result in her hasty retreat to India. She is Mycroft's problem now."

Molly could hardly hear over the blood rushing in her ears and her brain buzzed with the new information.

" I am still not good enough for you Sherlock … you have made that abundantly clear for a long time now…" Molly whimpered, "I can never be the kind of woman that I am expected to be. I can never be someone you love."

"Not …what? How can you think I don't-"

As quick as lighting Sherlock was once again right in fort of her, his hands grasping her elbows and his head bowed so she could not see his face clearly. When he spoke it the rest of the world seemed to descend into silence and she could feel his deep baritone in her bones.

"You _Intoxicate_ me."

Molly could not stop her gasp, shiver or wild heartbeat.

"You have entrapped me in a way that I can hardly even talk about. Your every movement and desire are things I must catalogue, your every thought something I must now or I will surly perish…"

He drew a shuddered breath,

"When you are near me my mind runs on tangents and my hands itch, as though they wish to touch you and never stop, and every moment you are gone my head is a fog of muddled thoughts and broken sentences no one but you can repair. I hate myself for feeling such emotions, but without them I fear I would be a hollow soldier once more. You make me fear. Fear the silence of an uninhabited life; fear the chill of an empty library, the stillness of a night without the sounds of your sleep. I hate myself for being weak, but if you are the prize of weakness Molly Hooper than I will chose to always be a weak man, for if I was ever without you I would not be able to _breathe_. .."

He pulled a hand up to stroke her face cupping it softly

" I am a man of fact and yet you concocted such nonsense within me that I cannot name, and I don't care that I feel these things – I don't care that at times I feel blind and other times I see with too much clarity to be sane- you have changed me Molly Hooper! You control me and keep me and make me sane … there is no happiness –no life!- without you … not for me…"

Molly could swear her heat had stopped beating and the world was spinning so fast the scenery was blurring. She could hardly breathe as she looked into his eyes and every word he had just vocalized sunk into her mind.

Her lips trembled as she tried to draw enough breath to speak. He laughed rich and deep as he pulled her closer with his smile.

"You love me?"

"What I feel for you can never be pinned down to a single word or phrase…"

Molly swore her bones turned to liquid in that moment.

Without hesitation and with a full blown blush Molly threw herself at Sherlock, her mouth connecting to his and her hands twisting in his shirt to keep herself upright. A current seemed to erupt in her veins as she felt him kiss back, humming softly and fuelling her wild heart.

…

Sherlock's heart was speeding as he clutched the small woman closer to his body, every instinct that he had tried to repress were now singing for him to have her - take her - have her close and never let her leave.

His hands slipped down her back and he groaned when he felt her shiver under his touch. All of his temperamental feelings were leaving him, and of the things that had caused him anger and confusion were quieting and sleeping as he kissed the woman he-…. Felt strongly for.

Somewhere in his mind a voice was ridiculing him for the sappy sentiment he had just spewed, but even that thought was expelled when Molly shifted against him and sent a blinding shock through his body.

A growl ripped from his throat and in a flurry of movement Sherlock pulled Molly down to the soft green grass, entrapping her in his arms as his mammalian instincts took control of his body. Hers responded in kind and the rest of the world ceased to matter.

The Garden around them descended into deep shades of red and then blue and only the silver flowers remained to glow in the moonlight. The stars shone down from the clear inky blue sky.

Shone down on the pair that now could truly call themselves; _Lovers_.

**XXX**

_Three weeks later Molly Hooper became Molly Holmes. Life was never normal with Sherlock around, but Molly became content in a place where she knew she could love and accept love in return, even if Sherlock could never say the word._

_But the kindly Doctors words would never leave her mind, never completely. His promises of darkness and a world unturned haunted her nightmares and her daydreams. _

_Her nightmares came to turn when a mad man with an impossible age crashed into London when the devil began to walk the earth and scar the land. _

_The world needed soldiers but all that was sent was a __**Doctor**__._

**XXX**

Thanks for reading, I know this took a long time but I haven't had much motivation recently. Sherlock is a little out of character here, but I think he would be different if he were raised in the different situation such as my version is. I am thinking of Including two more chapters to this but I will leave that decision up to you all; should I do more (more that might include a certain Mr Smith and one Mr Eccleston?) or should I just stop here?

Any way … hope you enjoyed it!


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